The University of Edinburgh established research in the field of Fire Safety Engineering in the early 1970s and today has the largest group of postgraduate researchers and academics specialising on fire science and fire safety engineering research in Europe.

The BRE Centre for Fire Safety Engineering was formed a decade ago and has forged strong links with a number of industrial partners in the UK, Europe and further afield.

The Granular Mechanics and Industrial Infrastructure Group conducts fundamental research on the mechanics of granular materials and their interaction with industrial infrastructure, with broad applications in silo design, bulk solids handling, paste rheology, fluidisation and natural hazard mitigation.

Research within this theme focuses on developing non-destructive testing, infrastructure sensing and monitoring methodologies and on evaluating and adapting promising new sensor technologies for tomorrow's smart infrastructure designs.

Communications systems are increasingly pervasive in all aspects of our lives. The institute carries out research to support the next generation of technologies that will meet the challenges of ubiquitous and seamless data connectivity. Our research addresses fundamental and industry driven research advances and practical integration of optical fibre, radio frequency (RF)/microwave, antenna and optical wireless, including Light Fidelity (Lifi) systems.

Signal and image processing algorithms lie at the heart of almost all of today's digital technology, from the mobile phone to advanced satellite imaging. IDCOM's expertise in signal and image processing spans fundamental theory through to algorithm design, with applications in a wide array of sectors across science and technology.

Tomography is the method that underlies medical scanners, which are mostly large, fixed installations, e.g. for X-ray CT scanning and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). Fundamentally, the portability and adaptability of any tomography system depends on the nature of the measurement process that it exploits, and it turns out that many tomography systems are "agile" in these respects

The technologies comprising the full Carbon Capture and Storage chain have the potential to significantly reduce global emissions of carbon dioxide and help tackle climate change as Europe and the rest of the world moves towards a low-carbon future

Our research combines fundamental physical understanding with advanced numerical methods to design better products and processes. Key to this research are techniques for modelling at each appropriate scale, and for scale-bridging so that the properties of systems at different scales can be linked, optimised and controlled.

Superconductivity is broadly recognised for its contribution to solving key research and societal challenges in Energy and Healthcare sectors. This theme includes research into the synthesis, characterisation and understanding of superconducting materials, as well as the design, modelling and testing of superconducting devices.

The Energy Policy, Economics and Innovation theme addresses the economic and policy aspects of energy systems, combining together expertise on applied economics, innovation theory, energy system organisations and institutions, and the wider policy and regulatory context of energy.

The aim of the group is to develop cost-competitive technologies for electricity and thermal energy storage. The work ranges from the development of the storage technologies to their integration into the wider energy system.

Understanding the interactions between energy generation and climate is crucial to providing a resilient and secure energy supply in the future.

The role of power generation in driving climate change is well accepted and a significant amount of the work in this research theme aims to develop not only low carbon energy sources like marine, wind and hydropower but also enhance their contribution by managing variability through network-friendly machines and energy storage.

Privatisation and deregulation of the electricity industry together with increasing penetrations of renewable and gas-fired generation have created a variety of technical and economic issues that must be addressed. These issues are separated into 5 research areas.

The integration of novel materials and devices with electronics to sense a range of physical properties such as heat, light, sound, radiation or chemical signatures such as pathogens or gases. This also includes integrating sensors with CMOS to increase their functionality (More than Moore) which involves both design and technology development.

In this theme the work balance leans more towards experiments, but computations are also performed. This theme has an emphasis on mixing and reacting jets, phase and thermodynamic state changes, mixing dynamics (e.g. spray-induced turbulence), chemical reaction, and the effect of these process on performance of technological devices. A very large experimental effort is devoted to the use, adaptation, and development of entirely new laser diagnostic techniques for sprays and chemically reacting flows. The theme leader is Professor Mark Linne.

This theme currently emphasises theoretical and computational research in micro and nano fluid dynamics, including: molecular and hybrid molecular/continuum methods; wetting and evaporation; interfacial flows; and rarefied gas dynamics (also for aerospace and vacuum applications). We are developing new work on urban pedestrian/traffic dynamics. The theme leader is Professor Jason Reese.